What is the difference between flours

Cake flour is made predominantly of soft wheat. Its fine texture and high starch content make it ideal for making tender cakes, cookies, biscuits, and pastries that do not need to stretch and rise much. Pastry flour is similar to cake flour but has a slightly higher gluten content.

This aids the elasticity needed to hold together the buttery layers in flaky doughs such as croissants, puff pastry, and pie crusts. Self-rising flour is all-purpose flour that has had baking powder and salt added to it. Use it in yeast bread recipes in place of all-purpose flour by omitting salt , and in quick bread recipes by omitting salt and baking powder.

How much cake flour should I use in place of pastry flour? Also, will the amount of baking powder, baking soda, or salt need to be changed? Pastry flour and cake flour are both milled from soft wheat and have lower protein levels, which makes them more suitable for items that need to be tender, such as cakes, pies, and pastries.

However, recipes call for specific types of flour for a reason. At 6 percent to 8 percent, cake flour has a lower protein level than pastry flour, which ranges from 8 percent to 10 percent protein. In the past, wheat was left to mature in the field, and flour was stored in silos for a while, allowing the oxygen in the air to bleach the flour naturally.

These days, because farmers take their wheat to market sooner, flour millers bleach flour to speed up that maturing process. Bleaching toughens cake flour's protein. This allows cake flour to support large amounts of sugar and fat without collapsing. But, because of this strengthening effect, substituting cake flour for pastry flour does have some physical effects. In cookies, for example, using cake flour reduces the amount that cookies spread. Still, because of its lower protein levels, using cake flour instead of pastry flour will yield products that are more tender and possibly more crumbly.

To compensate for that, you can substitute 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of cake flour for every cup of pastry flour. Normally, you don't have to make any adjustments in the other ingredients. Nine times out of ten, this is what you're reaching for when baking or cooking. If you have room for just one flour in your kitchen, all-purpose is your guy. Standard AP flour is a white flour, meaning the wheat grains called wheatberries have been stripped of their bran and germ during processing and grinding, leaving just the starchy endosperm.

That means that most AP flours are more shelf stable yeah, flour goes bad! It also means, unfortunately, that most of the nutritive properties of the wheat have been removed and along with them much of the natural flavor of the plant. The upside of all-purpose flour, though, is that it behaves predictably in baking. The amount of protein corresponds to how much gluten is formed when flour comes into contact with water.

In general, you can use AP flour in place of any of these other flours —it won't produce quite the same texture, but it'll be close enough. No flour, no pizza. No pizza, no fun. The main difference between bread flour and all-purpose flour is a matter of protein. We sifted through the details to find out the answers to these questions and more. Protein content determines how much gluten the flour will form, which in turn affects the textural quality of your baked good.

Less gluten. Light texture. With a protein content of approximately 14 to 16 percent, this high-gluten flour is a blend of Can you substitute all-purpose flour for bread flour and vice-versa? Yes, you can absolutely make a substitute.